A 360 degree view from Perseverance
Click for interactive map.
Andrew Bodrov from Mars360 has created another 360 degree mosaic using 854 high resolution images taken by the rover Perseverance when it stood at Lookout Hill, at the top of the rim of Jezero Crater. I have embedded it below. From his announcement:
The panorama provides a complete view of Perseverance, allowing you to examine its intricate design in incredible detail. Every component is visible, showcasing the engineering brilliance that powers this groundbreaking mission.
The Martian terrain stretches out around the rover, with its tracks cutting a path into the distance. The Jezero Crater rim, visible on the horizon, features rugged rock formations and textured sands that add depth to this remarkable scene.
The overview map to the right provides the context. The view begins by looking south, at the crater rim. If you rotate to the left you will see the tracks of Perseverance, indicating its previous travels, and then the rim to the north. Next the view looks outside the crater to the west.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
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Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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Click for interactive map.
Andrew Bodrov from Mars360 has created another 360 degree mosaic using 854 high resolution images taken by the rover Perseverance when it stood at Lookout Hill, at the top of the rim of Jezero Crater. I have embedded it below. From his announcement:
The panorama provides a complete view of Perseverance, allowing you to examine its intricate design in incredible detail. Every component is visible, showcasing the engineering brilliance that powers this groundbreaking mission.
The Martian terrain stretches out around the rover, with its tracks cutting a path into the distance. The Jezero Crater rim, visible on the horizon, features rugged rock formations and textured sands that add depth to this remarkable scene.
The overview map to the right provides the context. The view begins by looking south, at the crater rim. If you rotate to the left you will see the tracks of Perseverance, indicating its previous travels, and then the rim to the north. Next the view looks outside the crater to the west.
Readers!
Every February I run a fund-raising drive during my birthday month. This year I celebrate my 72nd birthday, and hope and plan to continue writing and posting on Behind the Black for as long as I am able.
I hope my readers will support this effort. As I did in my November fund-raising drive, I am offering autographed copies of my books for large donations. Donate $250 and you can have a choice of the hardback of either Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 or Conscious Choice: The origins of slavery in America and why it matters today and for our future in outer space. Donate $200 and you can get an autographed paperback copy of either. IMPORTANT! If you donate enough to get a book, please email me separately to tell me which book you want and the address to mail it to.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
A huge amount of money has been spent to inspect a speck of dirt. Useless dirt at that. Humanity needs to expand its horizons immensely or accept it’s an ember in the process of cooling and dying to a lump of carbon.
Yes, yes. I know you don’t like my comments. Maybe consider why that is…
M.,
Should we move faster at exploration? I think so but you cannot simply fiat such into being. Resources and technology must be present and developed so to do. I’m not sure how you have certainty that the rover data is useless, one has to scout ahead to know the conditions of where one is going to be prepared for the trip.
“Yes, yes. I know you don’t like my comments. Maybe consider why that is…”
Well . . . after careful consideration – I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like your way of coming around and posting your jerimiad, then leaving without positing any actions you think should be taken.
Except for lacking sagebrush this kinda looks like home here in the basin country of NW Wyoming.
A “speck of dirt” which has an area basically equal to all earth’s continents put together. I suppose it’s a “speck” on the scale of the galaxy—just like earth is.
I never get tired of these 360 degree images from Curiosity and Perseverance.
It just makes Mars mo0re tangible as a place we really could go soon, if we set our minds to it.
M. Murcek,
Louis and Clark thought that the midwest plains that they explored were also useless. Instead it is one of the world’s breadbaskets.
You never know until you try, speaking of expanded horizons.
And aren’t Curiosity and Perseverance expanding our horizons?
I do not think that our horizons are going to be on planets. I suspect that rather than living on planet surfaces, there will eventually be more people living in space stations (e.g. Gerard K. O’Neill’s idea or Babylon V‘s version) at various Lagrange points around the solar system or living on low gravity bodies, such as the Moon, all of which do not take so much energy to move from one place to another.
When we say that it is difficult to get into space, it is not so much that the rockets have to work precisely well, which they do, it is that we have to use so much effort and energy just to get off the Earth and into orbit. Getting out of the gravity wells are the hard part, so if we start living outside of those wells, then it becomes much easier to move around the solar system.
I know, Mars is a dead planet. Yet, it is still surprising to scroll that around and see absolutely nothing.
I mostly agree with Edward. There is very little point of a settlement on Mars because there is nothing on Mars worth pushing out of its gravity well. Moons and asteroids don’t have that problem. There can be very little of value there, but because of the lack of gravity, it’s still worth moving what little there is elsewhere. As long as one needs to build a self-contained habitat, anyway, might as well build it where there is no gravity and spin it.
The big counter-argument: We have lots of experience building on/in the ground. It’s probably easier to start building self-contained habitats where there is a “down” than where there is not. That’s the big advantage of the moon. Not to mention that we don’t have to move stuff very far to get benefits. Asteroids are further away (mostly). Moving mined/harvested stuff from them to us or zero-G smelting and construction equipment, which does not exist yet, to them is more difficult.
Humanity needs to expand its horizons immensely or…
I’d say that sending a helicopter to another planet counts as a good start toward expanding horizons immensely.
The next major milestone would seem to be a rover on every (major) body in the solar system or a fleet of rovers on the moon and Mars.
I don’t think we can walk and chew bubble-gum on this one, but perhaps. If I were Elon Musk, I would want a very good rover survey of where I was going to land my Starships. That means that he can pay for that “fleet” of rovers. I’m not aware of a private company interested in doing this on the moon, but there may be enough interested parties that “if you map it, they will buy” would work. The solar system is still in a more “pure science” state (i.e. NASA’s purview), imho.
Mark Sizer wrote: “I mostly agree with Edward. There is very little point of a settlement on Mars because there is nothing on Mars worth pushing out of its gravity well.”
Oh, I think settlements on Mars and the Moon have a point. We will learn a great deal from both places. This knowledge does not have a great cost getting out of these gravity wells. The people or their goods will cost a lot to move to other places in the solar system, but intellectual property could also be sold, if they invent things necessary on the Moon or on Mars.
However, I do not think that planetary settlements are the long-term wave of the future. The more we want to travel around the solar system, the less we will want to be inside deep gravity wells. Thus, I doubt that we will ever go to the trouble of terraforming Mars.